1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic devices displaying two-dimensional codes, methods of displaying two-dimensional codes, and recording media with programs recorded thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various electronic devices have recently been developed that display two-dimensional codes, such as a QR code (registered trademark), on their display screens.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2011-76540 discloses a technique for readily transferring text data edited in a document editor to another electronic device by encoding the text data into a two-dimensional code, displaying the code, capturing the code into, for example, a smartphone, cellular phone, or tablet computer having an imaging function, and uploading the captured data to a predetermined website or transferring the captured data to a personal computer through Internet mail.
In display of a two-dimensional code, if the encoding region, that is, a region other than function patterns, such as a position detection pattern and a timing pattern, of the two-dimensional code has a significantly large number of bright or dark modules or has a pattern similar to, for example, the position detection pattern, the two-dimensional code cannot be properly captured by imaging it with, for example, a smartphone having an imaging function in some cases.
To prevent such a situation, a masking operation is performed with an optimum mask pattern for uniformizing the bright and dark modules, selected among eight mask patterns prepared for the QR code, to generate a two-dimensional code.
Unfortunately, an electronic device, such as a scientific calculator with a central processing unit (CPU) not having particularly high throughput, takes a considerable time for the masking operations with the eight mask patterns. This increases the time for the user to image the two-dimensional code with a code reader, such as a smartphone with an imaging function, which makes the user feel that the electronic device is inconvenient.
Encoding tabular data used in a statistical computation or a table computation using a spreadsheet may generate multiple two-dimensional codes. Since each of the two-dimensional codes involves masking operations with the eight mask patterns, the situation becomes more critical.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic device capable of promptly displaying a two-dimensional code readable by a code reader, without particularly high CPU performance, and a method of displaying a two-dimensional code.